Across the board How games make us human

Whether intensely strategic, like chess, or made for family fun, like Life, games can bring people together. Role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons let us shape new worlds and defy convention. Clare (The Honours, 2020) shows how the love of games is probably as old as humanity itself, as archaeological excavation has uncovered evidence of games all over the ancient world. Dice, omnipresent in board games, can be a game all on their own and have even been used historically in religious rituals and literal life-or-death decisions. One of the most-purchased board games of all time, Monopoly, has a fascinating backstory. Today, interactive games like Pokémon have attracted a multigenerational following that continues to grow. Across the Board is an illuminating look into various games, their history, and the impact they have had on the people who play them and on society as a whole. Pull up a seat at the table and gain Clare's rewarding insight into the activities that pass the time, create bonds, build worlds, and make us feel special.

Tabletop board games are extraordinary for their very ordinariness, according this entertaining survey. Poet and podcaster Clare (Coward) notes that games have a startling similarity to one another across time and space, prompting his "slightly crazed" inquiry into whether tabletop games hold the secret to "what it is to be human." Each chapter tackles a different historical game, and while some of the examples feel out of place--a chapter explaining that 18th-century Swedes accused of group murder had to roll dice to see which of them would get executed does not actually give the impression of a universal human experience--eventually Clare does make an intriguing case for his hypothesis. The earliest, most elemental game in most cultures is the "race around the track," like parcheesi (originally Indian pachisi); this game type originated, in Clare's telling, as a scoreboard for keeping track of dice rolls. Dice were likely a neolithic era invention, an offshoot of "divination bones." Thus, games all evolved semi-independently as a natural way of recording and reckoning with probability, luck, and the divine. This insight leads Clare down some intriguing rabbit holes (including an investigation into why ancient Romans played with lopsided dice). Other attempts at the universalist theme fall a little flat ("Games are politics you can touch," he intones grandiosely in a chapter on Monopoly.) Still, readers will find many fascinating historical tidbits. (May)